Sioux leaders work on Black Hills lands proposal for Obama
By Kevin Woster
Rapid City Journal staff
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Sympathetic signs from President Barack Obama have inspired hope among Sioux spiritual and government leaders that some federal land in the Black Hills might one day be returned to Native American control.
Leaders for Sioux tribes in the Dakotas, Montana and Nebraska are holding meetings to shape a proposal on Black Hills land for the Obama administration, one they hope will be better than the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1980. That forced settlement was about millions of dollars, not acres of land, and it has consistently been rejected by tribes of the Great Sioux Nation.
“The consensus is that they will never take the money,” said Gay Kingman of Rapid City, executive director of the Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Association. “It’s the land that matters.”
It’s also the White House that matters, and the man who occupies it. Obama made an effective outreach to Native Americans during his 2008 campaign. He also showed an inclination to listen when representatives of the Sioux tribes asked for real justice – to them, meaning land – in the long-simmering Black Hills dispute.
The official version of U.S. justice was the financial settlement awarded at $106 million in 1980 and since swollen with interest to almost $900 million.
Some eligible tribal members have filed a class-action suit to force the settlement money to be distributed. But most spiritual and governmental leaders among Sioux tribes oppose the monetary settlement. They’re holding out for the land instead.
The Rosebud Sioux Tribe reflects the position of other tribes on the issue.
“The Rosebud tribe has taken a position that the Black Hills are simply not for sale,” former tribal councilman Robert Moore said. “And the tribe itself will not endorse any financial compensation for the land, based on previous settlement and interest.”
With Obama in the White House, many believe there is more hope than ever before that at least some unoccupied federal lands in the Black Hills could be returned to Sioux control. That’s why they have picked up the pace of meetings aimed at finding consensus among Sioux tribes in four states.
The tribes must meet that challenge before they reach out to Obama for help, Moore said.
“It’s the age-old issue of consensus,” he said. “What do the tribes want? How do they want this handled? The tribes have to come up with some consensus on this. The onus is really on them.”
Michael Jandreau, who has served as chairman of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe for 30 years, agrees that consensus among the tribes is crucial to finding a long-sought land settlement option that the president would consider. But it’s a difficult process that can’t be delayed or rushed, Jandreau said.
“Before they can come up with a document that is agreeable, it’s going to be a little bit of work, which is good,” he said. “They need to sort things out.”
The sorting process began officially in July with a meeting of medicine men, elders and tribal government leaders at Green Grass on the Cheyenne River Reservation. Another meeting followed at Lower Brule last week. And the next will be hosted Oct. 19-20 in Flandreau by the Santee Sioux tribes in Flandreau and Nebraska.
The idea is to build off a meeting that tribal representatives had with Obama during the 2008 campaign. They came away believing that he was serious about trying to find a settlement beyond the 29-year-old U.S. Supreme Court award.
Moore, who worked with Obama on a national tribal advisory group, said Obama and his staffers are clearly interested in “learning more about the Black Hills, its legal and political history, about what could be possible.”
It’s an old issue, filled with emotion. There have been previous attempts to return land taken by the federal government to the Sioux, including the most-notable bill by New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley in the mid-1980s. The Bradley bill made headlines and caused controversy in South Dakota but fell flat in Congress.
At that time, few South Dakotans beyond the Native American community supported the Bradley bill and its intention to return to the Sioux about 1.3 million acres of unoccupied federal forest and some park lands in the hills.
Jandreau doubts there’s much more support among white South Dakotans now. Nor does he know who might pick up the charge in Congress for Bradley, who left the U.S. Senate more than 12 years ago. None of South Dakota’s three congressional members has shown an interest in supporting a rerun of the Bradley bill, almost certain to be a political liability in a statewide campaign.
Republican Sen. John Thune has said he’s not inclined to open up an issue that was ruled on by the courts years ago. Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson and Democratic Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin have not committed either way.
Obama hasn’t come out publicly about the Black Hills lands issue. But Moore, Jandreau and Kingman believe he is serious about listening. And the tribes are serious about talking, just as soon as they can figure out exactly what to say.
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